


Secret name

by Lux_Grey



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drug Use, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-25
Updated: 2013-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-12 21:54:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/816469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lux_Grey/pseuds/Lux_Grey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After returning from the dead, everything had changed and nothing happened as expected. The tension had to break at some point. Thank God the streetlamps told Sherlock how to accomplish that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Secret name

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the song "Dein geheimer Name" ("Your secret name") by Tocotronic.
> 
> Unbetaed and I'm not a native speaker, I just felt like it.

After three years everything had changed.  
The flat looked somehow different, although the furnishing, the wallpaper and all the evidence of life were still mostly the same. Maybe the lighting was different.  
Baker Street had changed. There were new shops and signs, Speedys' had even got a fresh layer of red paint around the windows. The married ones had left two years ago, relocating to the countryside after adopting a sweet smiling boy with white blond hair.  
John Watson had changed. He looked older, sterner in a way. His skin seemed thinner, now that he lost the last bit of his army tan. Smiling didn't come easily to him anymore after mourning his best friend, partner and collegue for such a long time. 

 

When Sherlock Holmes had returned from the dead, he hadn't known what kind of reaction to expect. Everything had seemed possible, tears, joy, hard words or even physical violence. What he hadn't expected was what he'd gotten.  
John had looked at him from small sad eyes without any spark of recognition and just nodded his aknowlegtment. Short words of greeting without any real warmth in them. Of course he may move back into 221B, he himself still lived there because Mrs. Hudson had refused to rent the place to anyone else. For his possessions he should ask Mycroft for he was the one who cleared them all from the flat.  
Sherlock couldn'd care less for his old clothes and other junk. 

So he quietly moved back into his old room, feeling empty and forgotten, like an outgrown garment. 

 

John Watson had been hoping, wishing, praying and screaming for a long time, longer than any human being should, for Sherlock to return, for some sign that his suicide was some kind of bad joke. In the end he had to accept that he remained alone. The world slowly lost all its colores, everything faded to grey and left him anaffected.  
Nothing happened to him. 

So when Sherlock showed up one evening after his shift at the surgery, looking like a ghost of himself, thinner than he had ever seen him, his unwashed stained clothes hanging of him, skin alarmingly white and adorned with several bruises in his face, John was incapable to react at all.  
He simply accepted. 

Life in 221B Baker Street continued as if nothing had happened. John went to work in the mornings, did the shopping, prepared his meals and made himself cups of tea. In the evenings he would watch some telly or read a book before going to bed. On rare occasions he would hear noises from the downstairs bedroom, footsteps in the night or a door closing. Sometimes he even caught the glimpse of a coattail leaving the flat or the glow of a cigarette in the shadow. 

 

The two flatmates lived around each other for a while, their lives never really touching. But slowly, very slowly, a tension grew. It became stronger and thicker, enveloping its surroundings in a dark mist. 

 

_____________________________________________________________

It was a quiet night for John, occupied by some bad television program he followed indifferently. His flatmate had been absent for at least two days as far as he knew and he didn't expect the scene that would disturb his peaceful evening.

Something heavy crashed into the door to the flat. John slowly got up from the sofa, went to the door and opened it carefully. The limp body of Sherlock Holmes fell to his feet.  
His skin shown paper white in contrast to the inky black overlong curls. His eyes looked mad at John, grinning widely.

"John. John. John Watson. Your name is secret! John. It's a magic word."

The stupor of the last year or so fell off the doctor like a heavy blanked. He crouched down beside Sherlock, took his head in his steady hands and examined his gaze. His pupils were so enlarged the irises were but a thin ring around them. 

"John, your secret name, it brought me here again."

"Sherlock, what did you take?", John asked, panic rising in his voice. 

How could he have not seen this coming? How could he have been this stupid and ignorant? A wave of emotions washed brutally over him, all the feelings that had left him so long ago and hadn't been able to recall when Sherlock, his Sherlock had done the impossible and returned to him from the dead. He hadn't even asked what had happened three years ago, how he had managed to survive the fall, what he had been doing all this time. How was that possible?

"I don't know exactly, don't care very much. I wanted to be able to hear your name again, your secret name. John. I can now."

Remembering his profession, the doctor went about howling Sherlock on his unsteady feet and dragging him onto the sofa. Noise was still blaring from the telly, nobody noticed.  
Sherlocks shaking hands searched for something in his coat pocket and returned with a cigarette and lighter. 

"Christ, you're as high as a kite! What have you done to yourself? Where did you get it? Whatever shit you took..."

John began to examine his flatmate in earnest, in an attempt to shove the assault of emotions aside which tried to drown him. Taking the offending cigarette from his lazily gesturing hands, then getting him out of the coat John noticed the extent of Sherlocks actually loss of body mass. The detective looked and felt like a skelleton, even through his shirt and trousers. John rolled up Sherlocks sleeves, exposing transparent skin and clearly visible dark veins. Injection marks. A lot of them, but no fresh ones, the youngest at least a week old. That didn't actually make him feel any better. There were still plenty of options to choose from to destroy the human body.

"John, don't you hear it? Your secret name!" Sherlock sounded almost pleading, he'd never been able to tolerate to be misunderstood. Least of all by John.

"When I went away, I looked into your face and I was still able to hear it. But it faded somehow, it got quieter and quieter until I couldn't hear it at all. It was so boring! I was getting mad, the silence, John! How can anyone stand that silence? 

But the streetlights secretly twinkled a message through the night, it was a promise. I had to find you again. I stood at the threshold and the gate was closing.

I got you back but you could not hear me, the magic word. I thought the gate was locked."

Sherlock looked at John, begging for some comprehension, eyes wide and black. 

"John, why would you not hear it? I didn't know what to do!", he said, gripping at Johns jumper to make him understand. 

"I knew, once I would return I would be somebody else, but I never thought that you wouldn't hear me, recognise me. I changed you, too. That was never the idea. I always thought you to be the one person who would hear me, no matter what. You didn't... you were silent, too.

Tonight, I heard the whisper. The power grid whispered a message for us. Your secret name, John! It brought me back to you. And now, you can hear me again. Everything will be fine once more."

The detective smiled, the sweetest, most warming smile John had ever seen in his whole life. And it was meant for only him, John Watson.  
Moving Sherlock carefully to one side of the sofa, John sat beside him and rested Sherlocks against his own front, half lying down comfily. 

"O Sherlock, I don't have the faintest idea what's going on in this big mind of yours, but being drugged doesn't make you much more coherent. You do know, I'm one of the stupid people. "

"Nah, you're not. You've got a secret name.", Sherlock said, sounding tired now but nevertheless absolutely convinced. 

"Whatever you say. We'll talk tomorrow, sober and rested, okay?" John settled, his friend leaning against his chest, one arm around the narrow waist. He stroked his other hand through the mass of black messy curls, calming himself and the half sleeping genius. Sherlock nuzzled against the tender expression of care and affection.

"John, can you hear the whispers? The magic word?"

"Yes, Sherlock, I can hear it"

**Author's Note:**

> After 12 years of reading fanfic, BBC Sherlock forced me to try for myself. So, this is my first story ever, maybe the last. Thank you for reading.


End file.
